Morgan Tsvangirai on his personal grief and his hopes for Zimbabwe

In his first interview since the tragic deaths of his wife and grandson, Morgan Tsvangirai tells Alex Duval Smith in Harare about his struggles with grief and loneliness and the challenge of building a new political and economic future for Zimbabwe

Morgan Tsvangirai on his personal grief and his hopes for Zimbabwe

In his first interview since the tragic deaths of his wife and grandson, Morgan Tsvangirai tells Alex Duval Smith in Harare about his struggles with grief and loneliness and the challenge of building a new political and economic future for Zimbabwe

Morgan Tsvangirai is sitting in the converted maid's quarters that serves as his office, at his home in the Harare suburbs. It overlooks the garden with the pool where his two-year-old grandson Shawn drowned a fortnight ago, only a month after his wife Susan was killed in a car crash.

In his first interview since the double tragedy, he describes the depths of his grief and pays a touching tribute to his wife of 31 years. "I don't know how to replace her," he says. "It's almost unimaginable that anyone could ever take her place, with the same qualities and the same love and care." The deep voice cracks as he struggles to hold back tears. "Susan and I were married for 31 years. As you can imagine, that made her almost a lifelong companion. She was humble. Not very pretentious at all."

He seems to be missing a cufflink but does not say so, just fiddles with his shirt under his jacket sleeve. "Sometimes you become totally absent-minded. You're missing something, looking everywhere for it." He doesn't say the next bit: "Susan would have known just where I'd put them." Instead he says: "And then you realise you are not feeling her presence." She died two days after his maiden speech to Zimbabwe's parliament as prime minister, as he embarked on a coalition government with President Robert Mugabe. Shawn drowned on 4 April when, like many toddlers, he slipped out of sight of his parents and into the pool in the garden.

It is early morning in Strathaven, where Tsvangirai lives. The battered red Movement for Democratic Change campaign bus stands in the drive, looking spent. Security staff are cleaning cars that are already shiny. Tsvangirai's office walls are lined with political biographies and MDC campaign posters. He looks dapper in his dark suit as he speaks slowly, carefully choosing his words.

The couple, both from modest, Shona working-class homes, met in 1976. Susan was visiting her uncle in Bindura, where Tsvangirai, the eldest of nine children, had risen from plant operator to foreman after only two years at the nickel mine. They married in 1978 and Edwin, the first of their six children, was born. At independence in 1980, when Mugabe, then 56, became prime minister, Tsvangirai was 28 and Susan 22. A mineworkers' leader, he joined the victorious Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) but built his political career in the trade union movement. By 1989, at the age of 37, he was head of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

Ever in the background, attentive to her husband and his growing retinue, Susan - the kind of woman who would always have a needle and thread - was already "mother" to many.

"She was a solid pillar behind my career. She touched a lot of people in a very profound way," he says with a sudden depth to his timbre that defies grief. When Tsvangirai launched the MDC in 1999, Zimbabwe had lost its beloved first lady, Sally Mugabe, who died from kidney failure in 1992. Robert had married the young Grace, who was already showing excessive spending habits. Zimbabweans looked to Susan, a churchgoing Methodist full of restraint, as a future "amai" (mother) in the Sally mould.

"She was a very clear adviser on many issues both in the party and in the family. Losing her is a real personal loss. People have said, 'Do this, do that' to overcome the grief. It's only natural for people to feel sorry, but really the question is that it is a personal life experience that I have to go through on a daily basis."

His early mornings have just got a bit lonelier with the departure of relatives who had come home for Susan's funeral and Easter. Among them were the couple's second son, Garikai, 29, and his wife Lillian. They were the parents of Shawn, who had been living with Susan and Tsvangirai while they got settled in Canada.

Tsvangirai is not one to drop God into the conversation, even less the restive Shona ancestors whom some people believe must be haunting Zimbabwe if their prime minister has been so cruelly damned by two bereavements. "When Shawn died the immediate reaction from me was, 'Why me?' We thought that with the passing of Susan we had come to accept the reality. But Shawn's death was the more devastating for Gari and Lillian. It was another bolt from the blue. The boy was just a lovely boy."

No one suspects foul play in Shawn's death. But questions remain over the incident on 6 March that saw an oncoming lorry swerve into the southbound lane of the Harare-Masvingo road, forcing the Toyota Land Cruiser in which the Tsvangirais were travelling into a manoeuvre that killed Susan and slightly injured the other three occupants. It was four days before Tsvangirai's 57th birthday and the couple were on their way to their rural home in Buhera, 140 miles southeast of Harare, at the end of a whirlwind period that had started with Tsvangirai's swearing-in on 11 February and ended with his maiden speech.

In a country where the regime has often been accused of killing its foes in faked car accidents - and given that Tsvangirai has survived three known assassination attempts since 1997 - questions are inevitably being asked. Indeed, Zimbabwe's cabinet has voted to invite a senior foreign judge to head an inquiry into the accident. But the road to Masvingo is notorious. Last Thursday 29 people died in a bus accident on the same road.

Tsvangirai insists they were the victims of a real accident and he dismisses talk of the hidden hand of restive ancestral spirits. "In our custom they say all sorts of things but, really, it was an accident." He admits that his security arrangements are lacking. "We are taking measures to prevent a recurrence of such an incident. But the thing is that if the United States president can be shot, who am I to have a foolproof security arrangement?"

He is talking more animatedly now. Tsvangirai is a man who will bury his grief in his work, and he has plenty to do. The MDC's decision in January to enter a South African-brokered coalition with Zanu-PF has been a leap of faith into a world of non-believers. Preceded by 10 years of farm invasions, beatings, torture and killings of his supporters, flawed elections and his own two treason trials, the marriage with 86-year-old President Mugabe's regime seems doomed.

He understands the "cynical" western view that Zanu-PF entered the coalition only to use the MDC to obtain the lifting of US sanctions and European travel restrictions on the elite. But he denies he is being used: "We are the majority party, how can we be used? Western scepticism is justifiable because nearly 30 years of one man creates an impression that there will never be change. But let me tell you there is an irreversible process happening and no one wants to go back. The international community must accept that the transition is not an event, it is a slow process that requires changes of mindsets and cultures of governance. It is going to take some time."

But is there time? Tsvangirai and his ministers have inherited a situation in which more than half the population is on emergency food aid, the health system is limping on with drugs provided by Britain and state schools are only functioning because of foreign aid. Investors are not returning, because Tsvangirai still has not secured either guarantees of transparency in landownership and the judiciary, or the removal of Gideon Gono, the central bank governor who vandalised the economy.

The recent mini-scandal in the wake of ministers accepting new Mercedes cars was a clear example of the compromised position in which Tsvangirai now finds himself. These days, as a leading member of the unity government, he rarely criticises Mugabe. Three political prisoners, including his own former adviser, Gandhi Mudzingwa, are battling to clear their names after enduring four months of captivity on apparently trumped-up charges. Mugabe last week removed the communications portfolio, including oversight over surveillance, from Nelson Chamisa, the MDC minister of information and communications technology, and gave it to the Zanu-PF-controlled Transport Ministry.

Tsvangirai insists: "Gandhi, Gono, Johannes Tomana [the attorney-general] and Chamisa's portfolio erosion are all outstanding issues that will be dealt with at our meeting to review the global political agreement." That meeting was due two weeks ago, then last week, but has not happened. The party says a meeting between Mugabe and Tsangvirai is now scheduled for Monday.

Tsvangirai's supporters point to elements of progress. Hyperinflation was halted overnight last month by scrapping the Zimbabwe dollar and replacing it with hard currency. In another sign of progress, an all-party committee has been created to draft a constitution due to be put to a referendum next July, before elections in as little as two years. The unity government has found the funds to pay soldiers, the army, civil servants and MPs $100 a month. Imminently, in a significant signal of trust, the World Bank is expected to announce a post-conflict "pre-arrears grant" of about $100m to the Zimbabwean treasury.

Tsvangirai claims his party's democratic ideals will not be subsumed in the machinery of Mugabe's ruthless regime. But even when talking about sanctions, the president's hobby-horse, he does not condemn him. "There are those who say, 'Let's speak with one voice to get sanctions removed.' I say, let's act with one voice on unnecessary diversions like farm invasions that are blocking our path to building international confidence."

The danger is that Tsvangirai has responsibility without power. He carries a burden not only of grief but of tremendous expectations. And as he faces up to the most complex chapter of his life, he must do so, tragically, without Susan.